Other Programs & Initiatives

Haystack has taken a leadership role in examining the role of craft in our society.

Participants at the 2008 Creating in Maine symposium performed in the Haystack woods as part of a collaborative, design-based activity.

Haystack began the invitational symposia in 2002. The goal is to address issues related to the hand and craft making within a broader context of other disciplines. Past symposia have included Digital Dialogues: Technology and the Hand (2002), in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, Craft and Design: Hand, Mind, and the Creative Process (2004), in collaboration with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Craft and Community: Sustaining Place (2006) and Creating in Maine: Makers, Manufacturers, and Materials (2006 - 2008). The symposium is an intimate scale—there are 65 participants including presenters.

Fall 2009

This fall Haystack hosted two invitational symposiums - the fourth annual Creating in Maine: Makers, Manufacturers, and Materials, our 2-day conference in which manufacturers, designers, and artists from around the state are invited to come to Haystack and contribute to an ongoing discussion of what it means to be a part of Maine's creative economy, and O Brave New World:  Looking at Time, Making, and Creativity. Participants at this symposium investigated how makers use time and experience time, from philosophical, scientific, spiritual, and art-making perspectives. 

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Creating in Maine: Makers, Manufacturers, and Materials was held September 21-22. Former Maine Governor Angus King was the keynote speaker for the event. Other presenters included Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of Eepybird, which explores creativity, and in particular, the ways in which everyday objects can do extraordinary things; Deb Soule, founder and owner of Avena Botanicals; and Doug Green of Green Design Furniture. There will also be studio based design activities led by Jamie Johnston, faculty member in the woodworking and furniture design program at Maine College of Art and designer Scott Nash.

O Brave New World:  Looking at Time, Making, and Creativity took place September 24-27. Through a combination of lectures, studio-based design experiences, and informal discussions, the following ideas and questions were addressed: Technology is increasingly making connections that seem instantaneous. What does this do to the ‘slow time’ of making? How does art-making/creating help us to pay attention? We live in a world of labor-saving devices, but what can we learn from our labor, from our making? How do we measure creative time and how do we experience it? How are we making use of and adapting new technologies?

Presenters and participants represent a wide range of fields including craft making, design, literature, music, science, and slow food. They included Wesley McNair, is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Lovers of the Lost New and Selected Poems (Godine, 2009), and published books of essays and three anthologies of Maine writing.; Melissa Franklin, the Mallinkrodt Professor of Physics and Director of Graduate Studies, Harvard University; Dennie Palmer Wolf, a Senior Scholar at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and works in communities to think though using their resources to develop the creative capital of children, youth and families; D.Y. Begay, is Dine' from the Navajo Nation, is a weaver and a textile consultant to museums and private collectors and maintains the family tradition of raising sheep, dyeing wool, and weaving both traditional and contemporary designs; Edward Behr writes about food and wine - he is the publisher of the magazine The Art of Eating; Christina Bertoni teaches at The Rhode Island School of Design where she has served in many different roles as teacher and administrator, and where she occasionally teaches her course "A Survey of Time-keeping Systems”; and Robert Krulwich, Robert Krulwich is an NPR Science Correspondent, Robert Krulwich, and co-host of WNYC’s Radio Lab. He has been called "the most inventive network reporter in television" by TV Guide.

Many symposium participants collaborated on an elaborate textile project, led by Piper Shepard.

Studio activities and leaders for this symposium included: Blacksmithing, led by David Secrest, artist, designer, and blacksmith, who since 1978 in Somers, Montana has forged sculpture and architectural ironwork; Ceramics, led by James Makins, who is a potter and professor in the Crafts Department, University of the Arts, Philadelphia; Site Specific led by Diane Willow, who is a multi-modal artist who teaches at the University of Minnesota; and Textiles led by Piper Shepherd, who teaches at Maryland Institute College of Art and maintains her studio practice in Baltimore.